



Class... JP -3 3 53 ^ 

Book .h-45ES 
Gopight N°_[ _3_L3_ 


COEmiGOT DEPOSIT*. 

















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EVAPORATION 


There went up a mist from the earth. 


GENESIS. 



EVAPORATION 


A SYMPOSIUM 


By 

MARK TURBYFILL 
(XTtcL 

SAMUEL PUTNAM 


Winchester, Mass. 
MODERN REVIEW 
1923 



Copyright, 1923 


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JUL -7 *23 



C1A71129S 

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For permission to reprint certain 
of these poems the authors wish to 
thank the Editors of Secession and 
the Milwaukee Arts Monthly. 

Three of the Nine Related Poems 
are contained in MARK TURBY- 
FILL’S The Living Frieze. 








CONTENTS 


The Obstetric of the Idea.11 

Nine Related Poems 

Prelude . 19 

Crucified Shadows.20 

The Metaphysical Botanists.21 

Apples.22 

Fragment of Vision.23 

Dalliance Before Destruction.24 

Images of the Leavening of Love. . . .25 

Shapes.26 

Coryphee.27 

Scala Santa 

Mist.31 

Kitchen Symphony.33 

Seductions of a Mirror.44 


Notes 


49 





































THE OBSTETRIC 
OF THE IDEA 


By MARK TURBYFILL 












THE OBSTETRIC 

OF THE IDEA 


Like the obstetrical frog, man carries 
about with him the accretion of his ideas 
until they are hatched. Obstetrics is spoken 
of not only as a science, but as an art, and if 
it is not travesty to dignify as an art the 
solemn culture of eggs and spawn, how 
much more, by the same token, should it 
become a sober joy to undertake candid 
statement and accurate research in the direc¬ 
tion of that other, more significant and ulti¬ 
mate birth: in the maieutical delivery of the 
inspired conception, light—idea upon idea, 
infallibly related and grouped, resulting in 
the only creation and transfiguration of 
form. 

“Accurate research” I have used advis¬ 
edly. Nothing, any longer, in the sense of 
being true concerning the physical world, 
can be said to be accurate. It follows that 
even in a relative dispensation of this na¬ 
ture only his report will be authoritative 
who has known the travail whereof he 
speaks. Translated from the substratum 
of physical propagation into a more ethe¬ 
real sense of the cosmos, the truism, what 
is conceived has birth, becomes the idiom 


[in 


transmuted, and is seen to be a beam in the 
superstructure of truth. Abortive, there¬ 
fore, is the will to pass over as negligible 
certain analogies which seem to direct atten¬ 
tion to the underlying and overlying unity 
encompassing all. 

I offer these statements gleaned from 
individual experiences in “creation.” They 
have given me the desire to understand if 
the generative implications contained in 
such expressions as “to know,” “to con¬ 
ceive,” “to create,” are more than figures 
of speech. Speech , indeed! The imma¬ 
nence of the inextricable unity leads on to 
the very Word itself, the Logos that fash¬ 
ioned and created the universe. “In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God .... And the Word was 
made flesh.” 

The ambrosial flesh of poems is conceived 
and has birth. 

The point to be noted is that my meaning 
is literal. First the physical fact, then— 
because it is inescapable—the analogy. No 
complex calculations precede the turning of 
telescope upon an hypothetical Neptune of 
the soul. But rather as a youth without 
chaperon I came ingenuously, at the incep¬ 
tion of the poetic afflatus, face to face with 
disconcerting phenomena. 


[ 12 ] 


Thus in travail does the poet learn there 
are more things in heaven and earth than 
are dreamt of in our philosophy. Into the 
soul the immaculate ecstasy steals to nestle 
and brood; but the intangible insinuation is 
more subtly achieved than the sinuous in¬ 
terlocking of Pelleas in the arms of Meli- 
sande. And the impalpable impregnation 
leavens the ultimate body of being. 

My mind is 'parturient and tremulous 
With glistening schemes. 

Unfertilized thought congregates in 
misty, infinitive potentiality. Then, what 
is more than mother, more than food, more 
than body begging an animus—behold, the 
lightning strikes! The incubus of desire is 
rent: pain, contraction, crystallization; that 
which is primal beyond name, an infinitesi¬ 
mal point of the pollen of divinity has in¬ 
cased itself incredibly in the nebulous mem¬ 
bers of a fabled flower. 

Why is this dense body shaken and con¬ 
vulsed? Why this nausea? What is it stirs 
within? What unguessed womb will open, 
what poetic foetus emerge? 

The labor is done. It is born. It mat¬ 
ters little now what costume the craftsman 
will fling upon the issue. Its merits or de¬ 
merits are congenital; the idea can never 
creep back into that refuge beyond concep- 


[ 13 ] 


tion, to that force “whose seed is in itself.” 
Nor will horticultural technique render a 
fig from a thistle. 

But the poet, still wavering in the un¬ 
earthly after-glow, strives to pierce by sight 
the curtains of mist which close in beyond 
the proscenium that opens to another world. 
Obscured from the idea itself, his “poem,” 
poor replica, is indeed a thistle to his long¬ 
ing. He would divine again the celestial 
aroma, the lines of light. Often, however, 
when the stress of delivery is past, and a 
calm contemplation is achieved, the small 
stanza may prove a crumb by which to taste 
a fleet eternity. “Take, eat: this is my 
body.” 


§ 


The mechanical, blind, involuntary force 
that sweeps over the brain, scratching in 
gramophonic lack of resonance, producing 
what is spoken of as “argument,” “ques¬ 
tion,” “discussion” concerning poetry, cre¬ 
ated form, metric, is simply disembodied 
futility grazing a channel for vibration. It 
is by its very nature gratuitous. It has 
always been obsolete. 


[ 14 ] 


The poet in his arduous activity of par¬ 
ing away the rind of the apple of illusion 
is found to be impersonating individual 
forms of reality. His concept appears to 
open up in the shape of a stencil, an instan¬ 
taneous lens, as it were, through which may 
be glimpsed immutable Cause. Thus we 
understand the paradox and potency of 
Form, the minute shape and delineation of 
infinity. We get a concept of that hiatus 
to heaven, a silhouette of light, and see the 
effect on a page a printed poem. 

The cohesion of electrons as matter be¬ 
comes no obsequious barrier to sight. In¬ 
deed, matter has been spoken of as the 
absence of mass. We continue to surprise 
and capture the forces that vibrate beyond. 
It is no inconvenience to conceive of 
thoughts as lines of force, much less to 
detect the vibrations of mere words; and 
so proverbs and poems afford superb exam¬ 
ples of symphonic vibration. And in what 
more logical channel than a postulated 
sinew might a current flow? 

The theory that an arbitrary number of 
beats or syllables can have anything what¬ 
soever to do with Form reduces itself to an 
absurdity. The static electricity of such 
false reasoning would menace on a murky 
horizon. But the truth is, one tiny word 
symbolizing a patterned proscenium to the 


[ 15 ] 


absolute, where all rhythm moves and rests, 
may contain enough voltage of Cause to 
blow out the fuse of the brewing storm. 
Through that diminutive and formal open¬ 
ing may peep the rhythm of the universe. 

Being too grossly attuned to record the 
supernal harmonies, the doubters cross their 
lines of thought to produce the crucifying 
jazz of the ages. At the junction of their 
distressing intersection electrons spring into 
friction and birth. Their misty, aqueous 
legions mobilize. And a journey through 
the mist begins. The consciousness opens, 
and through the rift is seen the concept of 
Form. 

The daily crucifixions of matter must be 
penetrated and evaporated to be known as 
the highly decorative procession of shadow- 
patterns that they are. These in turn are 
but the gauzy ghosts and deliquescent rep¬ 
licas of Beauty itself. When we burn their 
whited masks we find them in the ballet of 
ideas, unalloyed. 


[ 16 ] 


NINE RELATED POEMS 


By MARK TURBYFILL 






















PRELUDE . 


Honey-comb of light, 

House of many mansions, 
Symmetrical, serene, 

As if to myriad clover, 

Effulgence, breath, 

We lift our heads, 

Divining; 

Perceiving, 

As we do, 

Lines of light, 

Cell on living cell, 

Brittle beams, plane through 
Shining plane; 

Striving, 

As we behold, to seize upon 
What pertinent oblique, 

To bend acutely past what angle 
Out of perspective at last 
To slant up what hypotenuse of fire, 
Transplendent, initiate. 


[19 1 


CRUCIFIED SHADOWS 


I remember a dune screened in rain, 

Love in communion, its voluntary of tears. . 

Now my sight through a vista of years 
Beholds the pattern of formalized grief: 
The figure ascends the lyrical mount, 

And the zenith of personal pain 
(Buds not blown to the wind, but slain) 

Is seen as two lines, cruciform— 

Pictorial balance, 

Motif of blossoms strangely illumed, 

Borne by a shadow up a hill. 


THE METAPHYSICAL 
BOTANISTS 


—So it was asters? 

Haven’t we now 
A little right to be proud? 

For in the beginning 

Up there under the eaves 

Our minds silently lifted 

An unknown pollen 

Stirred by an unpretentious breeze. 

Then came the clanging of traffic, 
The rattle of chains. People passed 
Like rattling chains. Hot dry winds 
Swept over the space 
Of that cloistered room. 

Spiritual poverty. No fertile rains. 

Could we be sure 

Our thoughts would bloom? 

Now we are smiling proudly, 
Trimmed with purple progeny 
Showering down from the eaves, 
From the window flower-boxes 
An unconquered laughter. 

We thought like asters 
Thrown against the wind. 


[ 21 ] 


APPLES 

My son . . . keep my command¬ 

ments and live; and my law as the 
apple of thine eye. —PROVERBS. 

Not unless the orchard flowering 
Connotes apple-brandy in bloom 
Would your thought distil 
From the radiant sight of him, 

Seize the essence of petal, 

Florescence of laughter and body firm, 

That he holds the commandments to live, 
And keeps the law 
The apple of his eye. 

Indeed, of these conjured images 
No evidence strikes the retina; 

Rather that old proverb of libido 
Vibrant in every sinew— 

Magnetism of delectable torsos 
Charges the body and the brain. 

Trim as a painted prow 
Flounced by rippled water, 

His prowess of light is adored 
By roues and rogues—innocent 
That such ambrosial flesh 
Was spelled by the Word. 


[ 22 ] 


FRAGMENT OF VISION 

Creation is the thought of spring: 
Loveliness falling, 

Calling a semi-circle of action 
To respond in completion: 

Flowers ascending through rain. 

The texture of your mind 

And the flavor of your consciousness 

Intact remain. 

We walked in a broad space 
And to us it was revealed: that 
After the spectrum fades, 

After the fringe of rain, 

After cloud-shapes vanish, 

Their imprint clings forever. 

It was not the stripped plane of land, 
Nor the stretch of the sea beyond, 

Nor the sting of lime from sand and shell 
That fell on everything— 

Not the fierce unheeded sweep 
Of two convergent figures 
Meeting by chance against the sky. 

These physical things 

Have shifted now to other springs. 

Only the untouched forms of daisies 
Resist translation to changing phases. 

[ 23 ] 


DALLIANCE BEFORE 
DESTRUCTION 

I cry unto you with even a beautiful name: 
Leash your devils, O my Beloved, 

Call back your fiendish cohorts 
Thronging the corridors of my senses; 
Conjure no more your black angels 
Deceptive with impalpable masks, 
Flickering into form, the incubus 
Of that unreachable loveliness, 

Propelling torture to the outstretched arms. 
Desolate me no more, O my Beloved, 

With the fullness of your vacuous will. 

For I am skilled in your modus; 

I warn you I know your avenues, 

Your intangible tentacles, too, 

Strangling me with the sweet fable of you. 

But when I arise you shall vanish 

Like attenuated dew on a sun-wise screen. 

I warn you, and cry unto you, “Peace!” 
Lest that you be destroyed. 


[ 24 ] 


IMAGES OF THE LEAVENING OF 
LOVE 

O you, whom to call Beloved 
Is a cry flung into battle 
In the world we tread; 

A sword of love and hate and pain— 

O you, whom to call Beloved 
In the world we tread is vain, 

I dreamed I walked with you in spring! 

O you, whom to call Beloved 
In the world we tread 
Is a gage of battle, 

A living measure too full with tears, 

There is more than our green earth of 
spring! 

Beloved! You have leavened my mind: I 
behold 

An image sitting with crossed feet, 

Eyes steadfastly fixed ahead 
Serene upon Love, the last transparent 
fire. 


[ 25 ] 


SHAPES 


Let us deliberately sit into design 
With these elephant ears 
Stretched from the glazed pot 
Into green wax consciousness. 

Let us exert 
Our unused selves 
Into other static 
Sharpnesses. 

In what fleet gestures 
Have you found eternity? 

His amber painted torso 

A Persian dancer 

Has conceived into a leaf-line, 

The head inclined. 


CORYPHEE 


With a little poem 
Like a coral flower 
I would send you away. 

I spent many days 

Dissolving what the eye 

Beholds; and what the hand 

Can hold: ransacking the world 

To surprise the mute and subtle forms 

That wait beyond these things. 

But you are unalloyed: 

On the shadowy stage 
A coral flower 
Fluttering in a misty reef. 


[ 27 ] 




SCALA SANTA 

A POEM SEQUENCE 
By SAMUEL PUTNAM 




A Tear is an Intellectual thing; 

And a sigh is the Sword of an Angel King. 

—William Blake. 


MIST 


For M. T. 

squats 

like an old woman or a hen; 
would mother with shadowy cluck 
the wandering chick of illusion. 

Here 

grass blade and star and 
weird amalgam of soul in cool 
adumbration. 

(An old man 
walks alone 

with distant vague accompaniment 
beard green and greening.) 

Hers the perfected frailty 
where strength is, 
her breath 
an elevation bell. 

Nuptial clash 
of dark and light, 
bridal moriturity of 
light? 


[ 31 ] 


Recoil 

of cosmic nascencies. 

One comes with uplift face. 

Lifts 
slowly 
\ Avhere? 

Blindingness of white 
assails the retina; 
bath 

of glowing nudity. 

Two run to mate: 

grass blade and star 

wed prefigurations 

of a beard green and greening. 

(An old man’s footfall 
leaves printless imprint 
in the dust of reality.) 

Trail of an egg 
leaves a shell burst 
with significance. 


[ 32 ] 


KITCHEN SYMPHONY 
(Marche des Choses) 

Melee of macabre exigencies 
saturnine importunateness 
of detail fibred 

to a smirched and sooty transparency 
reflect 

in clash of plane and sphere. 

Utilities proponent 

futilely ogle 

the obese reticence 

the repellent chastities of dark 

orotund immersions. 

Canalized perspective blends 
with mucoused desire 
in the rubrifying glow 
of peptic salivations mute 
orchestrations of the gastric. . . . 


Pots and pans silent flutes 
skillets saucepans smutty lutes 
broom and basket stove and sink 
bring us to the conscious brink 
where umbrageities escape 
projections that would rape. 


[ 38 ] 


BROOM 

Unfertile refractions 
of an impenetrable 
consomme of frictions. 
Why does a heresy 
always ride 
astride ? 


DISH PAN 

Inordinate conflux 
foci tintinnabulant 
placated 
pallors of form. 

COOK 

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. 
The goose laid a golden egg. 

Jack fell down and Jill was drowned 
And the king was married to Meg. 

STOVE 

I bring 

unexpurgated fervors 
of an antique 
deliquescence. 

None shall assail me 
with the reproach 
of unassailable 
propinquity. 


[ 34 ] 


SKILLET 

Into the fire is an elusion 

of undesiderated mendacity. I cling 

with sibilant stultiloquence to the liaison 

of an egg scrambled 

to a formless consistency 

and egregiously betrothed 

to the attenuations of a porcine syllogism. 

Necrophilics of taste 

borrow a respectability 

from burgher virtues of toast. 

A mauve reminiscence paves 
conquest of oblivion. 

POT 

I burn with ardors 
passionlessly dissimulated 
against the encroachments 
of gross similitudes. 

The caliginous taunt of a shadow 
snares only shadows. 

The quiet aspersions of a potato 
come nearer home. 


COOK 

All 

flirt with flagellations 
of sensuous impotence. 


[ 35 ] 


KETTLE 


I at least may repel 
illicit pregnancy of epithet 
slay with an evaporate disdain 
the causerie of effect. 

POT AND KETTLE 

So does abortive duet 
perish in ecstatic sublimate 
yield to the autocthonous 
invasion of unity. 

BREAD KNIFE 

The dogma of sturdiness 
demands more subtle 
disseverance. It seeks 
the esoteric mating 
of the opaque. 


SPOON 

The spilth of truth 

is wine on the ground bread 

under foot connotative 

of the genuflect. I have known 

precipitate abduction 

of the obvious redundant. 


[ 36 ] 


COOK 


Hey hey diddle, 
a cheese for a fiddle 
a cat and a cow are kin, 
a choric bark and a cosmic lark 
will expiate a sin. 

DISH 

Spill implies 

plenitude or shallow. Choose. 

A dimensional pruriency 
lifts the skirts of a mythos. 

Puris omnia. Benedicat 
dominus deus noster 
infantium libidinem. 


POT 

A pig can quote Latin. 
Pot’s soot is satin. 

COOK 

Dish metaphysical 
FISH slightly phthisical 
feeds on placenta 


BREAD KNIFE 


Cut the umbilical. 

PLATTER 

So the 

mesalliance of fat and lean 
in resolution suckles 
a roly-poly 

tradition of purgation. 

I, too, 

have slain a wall to prison 
blindness and a vision. 
Fatuity of plane foreshadows 
futility recedent. 


COOK 

But there is something to be said 
to the living by the dead. 

There is much that may be spoken 
if a silence is unbroken. 

There’s an echo to be caught 
something found if never sought. 
There’s a lady waiting capture 
only yields herself to rapture. 


[ 38 ] 


SINK 


If one never forgets 
my admonitory rivulets— 

tricklings 

of voluble placidities 
hilariously mismated 
querulous filtrations 
of an ancient lust— 

all come to me. 

Do not forget 

not to remember. 

GARBAGE PAIL 

Not all to you. I share 
a wistful gregariousness extend 
a dubiety of choice 
the embrace of hate 
affectionate 

the evangelium of wait. 

The mouth of Iokanaan 
waters for the alley messiah. 

COOK 

Then let us weave 
contrappunto indicative 
slim choragus with a seive 
dithyrambus fricative. 


[ 39 ] 


BROOM 


Straddle me and ride away 
where old sagas are at play 

DISH PAN 

To the cool rim of the moon 
with a laughter 
running after 

COOK 

Humpty Dumpty’s back too soon 

STOVE 

If the moon’s a little cool 

SKILLET 

Into the fire, 

Don’t be a fool. 

KETTLE 

Fire is but a vaporific 

made for me to be specific 

POT 

As you were made to give me back 
the illusion that I lack. 

DISH 

The metaphysics of a rape 
I’m sure would set you all agape. 


[ 40 ] 


COOK 


Few have fiddled with a cheese 
and the wise are not of these. 

PLATTER 

There are few who know the kith 
that is kindled in a myth. 

BREAD KNIFE 

Fewer yet are ever able 
to carve a cosmos from the fable. 

COOK 

Here begins 
a tercet of dark sins 

SINK 

If one forgets 
my admonitory rivulets— 

GARBAGE PAIL 

The alley messiah is at the gate. 

He rejects your trickling hate. 

Only the damned know how to wait. 

He is wise and at the gate. 


[ 41 ] 


BREAD KNIFE 


Has not the glint 

of my disseverance been a hint 

of this and more than this ? 

What is disseverance but the kiss 
of a widowed synthesis? 

SINK 

In the hilarity 

of a regurgitant disparity 

I find 

penumbra more to mind. 

GARBAGE PAIL 

In my evangelium 
I sum 

the both of you. 

BREAD KNIFE 

True. 

And each of us 


r 4*21 


COOK 

the other two. 

Now for the view 

where canalized perspective 
ends 

and the macabre 
melee of the exigent 
saturnine importunate 
reflect no longer 
melts 

in new myopias 

where an old rite 

prolongs the theme liturgic 

litany 

of the lasciate ogni chi 

until a groping asperges me 
dissolves in an absolvo te. 


[ 43 ] 


SEDUCTIONS OF A MIRROR 


Arrogance is a masque contemptuously 
flung 

over a mirror pompously hung 
on the frivolous humility of space. 

It woos 

the unrelenting direction of feet 
lured by the chant 
immuring, dissonant 
of diapasoned chaos. 

It spawns a blind mirage in the path of 
light 

and weaves a luminous shroud for radiance. 
For it 

the delusion of a cane confirms 
the illusion of confusion and reveals 
the obtrusion of shadows; shadows bulk 
to balk dispulsion of the dream of blind¬ 
ness. 

The grotesque embassages of a mirror 
are a susurrus 
to fingertips of cane; 
they project 


[ 44 ] 


the propinquity of shadows on the heft 
of a fleeing fantasy. 

Mirrors are for the blind. 

The elongations 

are kind to the grimace, 

a subtle jocosity 

to the immanent cynicism of a mirror; 
they evoke 

a smile of burnished convexity. 

(Have you not shuddered 
at the subdued table talk 
the ascetic ribaldries of a looking glass 
meshed in tranquil hallucinations of men¬ 
dacity ? 

Has not your arm dropped and drooped 
to dally with an unamiable resistance?) 

For the despair of feet circumferent 

the hopelessness of hands in tortuous arc 

frustrate 

homecoming of fingertips 

are nothing to a mirror: they are 

the shattered desolations of a jest. 

How then not make love 

to the intimate repulsions of an axe? 

how shun 

the caressing crucifixions of a mallet? 

[ 45 ] 


The wall sways, the mirror 
a pendulous penitence, embraces 
a fissured perplexity. 

Patter of eyes not eyes outruns 
the laggard titubations of a cane; 
dark sucks in; eyes 
view eyes and drown. 

The mirror cracks and crashes. 

Shadows unremembering 
view their unremembered bulk. 

And the arrogance of masques and mirrors 
avenges 

the frivolous humility of space. 


[ 46 ] 


NOTES ON 
“SCALA SANTA” 




NOTES ON “SCALA SANTA 


Scala Santa: 

“Men do not understand the lustrous 
hag’s divine diablerie. They see merely the 
horns of a toad. That which rises, vaporous, 
to them is cloud, nothing more. Eyes, 
stumbling always, never attain denudation 
of vision. Only the poet, climbing to radi¬ 
ance, does that when, seizing a trident sig¬ 
nificance, his breath creative dissolves the 
enshrouding fog.”— The Hamadryad of the 
Sacred Tonsure 

“E l’anima anche ha sua storia.”— Croce. 
“A Tear is an Intellectual thing”: 

I subjoin a perplexing passage from Pa- 
pini (paper on F. C. S. Schiller, 24 Cer- 
velli) : 

. . si puo risalire, volendo, anche al 
celebre aforisma di Protagora (l’uorno mi- 
sura di tutte le cose) cosi scandaloso per 
l’anima ingenua di Platone. II Saint-Mar¬ 
tin, le philosophe inconnu, mise come epi- 
grafe a una delle sue opere quest a frase: 
If ne faut pas eoopliquer Vhomme avec les 
choses mais expliquer les choses avec 
Vhomme. Lo Schiller potrebbe mettere ai 
suoi libri un’ epigrafe ancora piu ardita: 
II ne faut pas soumettre Vhomme aux 

[ 49 ] 


choses, mais il faut que les choses soient sou- 
wises a rhomme. La frase del Saint-Mar¬ 
tin pud sembrare un ritorno all’ animismo 
dei selvaggi, e la frase che potrebbe esser di 
Schiller pud sembrare un ritorno alia 
magia dei barbari, ma ambedue possono 
essere invece i motti di una nuova eta spir¬ 
itual, che pud esser segnata da qualche av- 
venimento piu importante della scoperta 
dell’ America o della macchina a vapore. 

“Per far questo bisogna lasciare indietro 
tutti i carriaggi metafisici, ormai vuotati di 
tutto quello che potevan dare, e trarre dalla 
nostra anima non soltanto spettacoli singo- 
lari di vana curiosita, ma quell arte della 
creazione che gia da varie parti si annunzia 
e si prepara.” 

The metapltysical exactitude of the fore¬ 
going may be questioned, but the statement 
is an evocative one. 

“Non seulement l’homme, mais toutes les 
creatures—les animaux, les plantes, et jus- 
qu’aux objets inanimes qui re^oivent une 
ame au contact de l’homme,—s’impregnent, 
se penetrent du parfum de la personnalite; 
toutes les creatures qui possedent, elles 
aussi, un Ka, un 'double,’ un 'corps astral’ 
et un visage non humain doivent etre repre¬ 
sentees avec la meme exactitude que le 
visage de l’homme, pour ressusciter avec lui. 


[ 50 ] 


Semblables aux fleurs d’une grande prairie, 
elles attirent le Ka, l’abeille avid de miel, 
vers cette supreme et divine fleur de la per- 
sonnalite qui s’epanouit sous le soleil de la 
Resurrection.” 

Dmitri Merejkowsky , traduit du texte 
russe inedit par Michel De Gramont, Mer- 
cure de France, 15 Fevrier, 1923. 

Mist: 

“. . . we are in a mist— we are now in 
that state—We feel ‘the burden of the 
mystery’. . .”— Keats ■, letter, May , 1818 

See “The Little Boy Lost.” 

“La beaute est done un phenomene de 
spiritualisation de la matiere.”— Amiel 

grass blade and star: 

“. . . il represente la pensee divine aussi 
clairement pour les moins qu’une fleur ou 
qu’une systeme solaire . . . elle est superi- 
eure au temps et represente l’eternel. . . .” 
— ibid . 


An old man walks alone: 

It is to Plotinus, rather than to Plato 
that the poet turns. There has been much 
misunderstanding chatter, and poets have 
not been wholly free from error in the 

[ 51 ] 


formulation of their aesthetic; though the 
poet always knows. Nevertheless, Plato 
had, has something to say. He said the 
thing, said it first. Even though his “in¬ 
genuous soul” could not wield the world it 
had created, his work, his word remain. It 
was the false doctrine of piprjaig which 
caused him to fumble the ball, snapped up 
by Plotinus. 

her breath an elevation bell: 

“And I will not make a poem nor the least 
part of a poem but has reference to 
the soul, 

Because having look’d at the objects of 
the universe, I find there is no one nor 
any particle of one but has reference 
to the soul.”-— Whitman 

Recoil of cosmic nascencies: 

“Un bon tableau, fidele et egal au reve 
qui l’a enfante, doit etre produit comme un 
monde. De meme que la creation, telle que 
nous la voyons, est le result a t de plusieurs 
creations dont les precedentes sont toujours 
completees par la suivante; ainsi un tableau 
conduit harmoniquement consiste in une 
serie de tableaux superposes, chaque nou- 
velle couche donnat au reve plus de realite 
et le faisant monter d’un degre vers la 
per f ect ion. * ’— B and el air e 


[ 52 ] 


One combes with uplift face: 

“The liberating and purifying function 
of art.” See Croce, Estetica, I., ii. 

bath of glowing nudity: 

“Le secret de Fart grec reside la, dans 
cette finesse a degager la ligne unique et 
necessaire qui evoque la vie et en determine 
du coup comme la type eternel.” — Paul 
Bourget 

I am reminded also, somewhat remotely, 
of Carducci’s lines: 

“A Cristo in faccia irrigidi nei marmi 
II puro fior di lor bellezze ignude.” 

This is the Baudelairean reve de pierre , 
which 

“Est fait pour inspirer au poete un amour 
fiternel et meut, ainsi, que la matiere.” 

leaves a shell burst with significance: 

“Be shelled, eyes, with double dark 
And find the uncreated light: 

This ruck and reel which you remark 
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.”— 
Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Kitchen Symphony: 

“. . . and with a tale forsooth he cometh 
unto you, with a tale which holdetb chil¬ 
dren from play and old men from the 
chimney corner.”— Sir Philip Sidney 

[53] 


“Cependant c’est un echantillon de la 
beaute universelle; mais il faut, pour qu’il 
soit compris, que le critique, le spectateur 
opere en lui-meme une transformation qui 
tient du mystere, et que, par un phenomene 
de la volonte agissant sur l’imagination, il 
apprene de lui-meme a participer au milieu 
qui a donne naissance a cette floraison 
i nsoli te. ’ ’—B audelaire 

Marche des Choses: 

The thing to be sought, of course, is the 
xi fta'upacFTbv xi]v qpijaiv xodov of Plato: see 
the end of Socrates’ account of Diotima’s 
speech in the Symposium. Here may be 
viewed the evolution of the Platonic error, 
which, knotted in the problem of pigr]Gig has 
perched on the souls of poets and mystics 
ever since. 

The trouble is, it is here not evolution, but 
an attempt at involution, while it is evolu¬ 
tion that is and must be, an evolution re¬ 
sulting in the birth of the preconceived, the 
pre-create, which merely snatches the veil 
from the thing, lifts the mantling mist. 
This it is that makes one doubt the sound¬ 
ness of Papini’s revamped epigram, with its 
(C ritorno alia magia dei barbari.” Saint- 
Martin, after all, is nearer correct. 


[ 54 ] 


But there’s something in the wind. I 
quote from a pronunciamento of Gorham 
B. Munson, founder of the “Secessionists”: 

“Strangeness. The movement away from 
naturalism and realism, the deliberate im¬ 
position upon a basically realistic attitude 
of romantic materials for the intellect to 
exploit and arrange. It includes the sub¬ 
jection of new materials such as exclusively 
modern sensations produced by machinery. 
The true meaning of romanticism is the 
crusade for new materials.” 

To determine how far I agree with Mr. 
Munson would require some definition of 
the words, “basicallv realistic.” As to this 
whole question of “secession,” I should like 
to cite again a work for which I have some 
respect: 

“There are some who speak of recession. 
Forgetting that, in the synchronous chron¬ 
ology of the spirit, there is only the eternal 
brahmanic Now. A jazz baby on this 
bench and shoal of time is a jazz baby, 
nothing more. A halo round the head or 
an Ide & Wilson round the neck. The poet 
spits an asperges and a catharsis. 

“Give over, too, babble of divagation. 
We deny the implication of a corpus .”—The 
Hamadryad of the Sacred Tonsure 


[ 55 ] 



All this connotes the cerebral: “A Tear 
is an Intellectual thing”; but beyond is 
“the Sword of an Angel King.” 

FISH slightly 'phthisical: 

Cf. the ecclesiastical 

I too have slain a wall to prison blindness 
and a vision: 

“La vita esteriore,” remarks Valentino 
Piccoli, “e la grande soffocatrice delle 
anime ribelle,” and he goes on to quote 
Baudelaire’s 

“ . . Ame aux songes obscurs, 

Que le Reel etouffe entre ses quatre 
murs!” 

The poet might appear to have his di¬ 
mensional arithmetic wrong; but his image 
is, of course, the prison cell. 

Do not forget not to remember: 

A seductive spring night. A freshman 
in a college library. Gothic within, the 
night-drone of the city without. The eve 
of final “exams.” Back work to make up, 
some sixty-four pages of virgin Greek to 
be “crammed,” somehow, before morning. 
Suddenly, the boy encounters the words: 
oij xatabg Aiyeig, cb dvflpcojte, si oisi 8siv xivSu- 
vov 'UJioXoyi^so&ai xov £qv ?j xsQvavai dv8qa o~ 
xov xi xal apixqov oqpeAog scmv, all’ oi>x sxetvo 
povov oxojcsIv, oxav jtQdxxrj, noxeQa 8ixaia fj 
a8ixa jtQaxxei xal av&Qog dya&oh eqya r\ xaxob. 

[56] 


And later: 

alia xai upag & dvSpeg Sixacrtai, eueAju- 
8ag eivai jiQog tov fravaxov. 

“Exams” were forgotten. Plato, Soc¬ 
rates, the dv8Qeg ’AO^vaioi, the imminent 
hemlock, became realities. It was the be¬ 
ginning of many things for the boy. 

the evangelium of wait: 

“Sie warten lange. Ihre Schultern schwan- 
ken 

unter dem Drucke wie ein dunkles Meer. . . 

Ihre Gehirne denken irgendwo 
tief in der Erde, eingefalien, faltig: 

Die ganze alte Erde denkt gewaltig 
und ihre grossen Baume rauschen so.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke: Das Jiingsie Gericht 
melts in new myopias: 

“Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, 
Which was my sin, tho’ it were done 
before? 

Wilt thou forgive that sin thro’ which I 
run, 

And do run still, tho’ I do still deplore? 
When thou hast done, thou hast not done; 
For I have more . . .” 

—John Donne. 

where an old rite prolongs the theme lit- 
urgic: 


[ 57 ] 


“L’homme religieux assiste avec un trem- 
blement de joie sacree a ces phenomenes 
dont il est l’intermediaire sans en etre 
l’origine, dont il est le theatre sans en etre 
hauteur. . . — Amiel 

The metaphysie of a mediaevalist, of 
whatever date, is always to be watched 
closely for latent but radical error. 

litany of the lasciate ogni chi: 

There is the old “Securus judicat orbis 
terrarum” argument: “Mais il est dan- 
gereuoc de se mettre hors la lois du genre 
humain et de pretendre avoir raison contre 
tout le monde ." Even a “revolutionist” 
(Carducci) admits: 

“. . . Dei secoli 
Lo strato e sul pensiero.” 

It is the old plea, of Pascal’s raisons, 
against the corrosions of intellect. 

Seductions of a Mirror: 

The Kantian mirror. The symbol is am¬ 
biguous and therefore easily misleading. 

diapasoned chaos: 

The search is (Wordsworth’s) for 
“A central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation.” 

“The end of culture is not rebellion but 


[ 58 ] 


peace. Only when the soul has attained a 
deep moral stillness has it truly reached its 
end.”— Pater (quoted memoriter) 

Cf. the ethic of modernity, ‘Tangoisse de 
Laocoon se debattant contre Vhydre du 
mat” 

Papini, in his essay on Buddha Sidd- 
harta, once warned us against “melancholy 
twilights.” There is a peace, however, that 
is not crepuscular, a peace that is some¬ 
thing other than quiescence. 

the subdued table talk: 

I had Luther’s Tischrede somewhere in 
mind, which may be a half-subconscious 
throw-back to Scala Santa. 

the laggard titubations of a cane: 

“But are his great desires 
Food but for nether fires? 

* * * 

That he 
Must finally 
Through sacrificial tears 
And anchoretic years 
Tryst 

With the sensualist?” 

—Francis Thompson. 

S. P. 


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